Is that true? If they don’t believe they’ll be caught? I kinda think so, given what I see in sports, especially professional sports. If they don’t, they’ll lose.
But even in non-professional sports, and card and parlor games and the like.
A really competitive person, it seems, just cannot stand to lose. Monopoly, even! :dubious:
Same for business, and work, and driving home.
Sometimes they call it an “edge”.
Do you ever cheat?
I don’t, but I’m boringly “don’t give a shit”.
Really.
Peace,
mangeorge
I suppose it depends on your definition of a ‘true competitor’ and a ‘really competitive person’.
It appears that many professional cyclists take drugs and constant testing is also needed in athletics.
However Greg Norman was enormously impressive despite losing a huge lead in the last round of the 1996 US Masters to Nick Faldo.
On a personal note, I’m a competitive person and an internationally-ranked chess player. I don’t cheat at chess (nor at computer games or anything else).
It’s a matter of pride and self-respect.
In the hopes that I’ll get this one right:
Moved from IMHO to GD.
A really competitive person can also view winning by cheating as worse then losing. Competitive and honest are two different things.
In my view, a true competitor does not cheat, because if they do they aren’t really competing any more. It would by like shooting history’s best swordsman and claiming that makes you a better swordfighter. You can only prove that you are better within a set of rules or a specific field, by competing within those rules or within that field. Otherwise, you are doing something else than playing a game, or are working in a different field. Shooting that swordsman might prove I’m more deadly, but unless I beat him with a sword, I’m not better with a sword, simple as that.
The OP’s premise is faulty, IMHO. There is no guarantee that those who do not cheat will lose.
I think it depends on how the game’s rules are enforced. If there’s an actual human watching all the competitors whose job is is to enforce the rules through some sort of penalty system, then yeah, pretty much everyone cheats. OTOH, if the competition has no “rule-enforcer” and no real means of enacting penalties, then no, nobody cheats.
In sports, pretty much everyone cheats all the time because it’s a matter of getting away with it while under the watchful eyes of the refs. As examples:
In the NFL, penalties are doled out in the form of loss of yards/downs. It is said that there’s holding on every play.
In the NBA, penalties are doled out as fouls, which will eventually lead to ejection. Traveling is so rampant it’s almost no longer a rule.
In the NHL, penalties are doled out in the form of penalty minutes, where the team who committed the infraction has to play shorthanded for some fixed amount of time. Not sure of the most violation penalty in hockey, but penalties in general are pretty common.
However, in a game like chess, there is no penalty system. Either both players play the game exactly within the confines of all rules, or the game doesn’t work. Thus, there is no cheating in chess.
Mike & Mike In The Morning were discussing this topic during the most recent A-Rod snafu, when he yelled something as he was rounding the bases making the inexperienced fielder fail to catch the ball. Most of the baseball analysts blasted A-Rod, saying it was bush-league and violated the “unwritten” rules. Apparently, while the main attitude of sports is “if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t tryin”, there is such a thing as a rule you “just don’t break”. It’s sort of a macho code of conduct that the competitors abide by or risk having their character come into question.
The funniest thing about this conversation was when Golic (a defensive linemen) likened the A-Rod transgression to a defensive linemen yelling “hike” before the snap to get the offensive line to false start. He tried to explain to Greeney how it was different than holding or pass interference, but Greeney wasn’t buying it. Then Troy Aikman called in, and they asked him about it. Troy’s reply? “Well, there is an actual rule against it in football, but despite that I had that done to me all the time. Not sure why you never saw anyone do that, Golic, other than the fact that you were surrounded by hall-of-famers like Reggie White who never needed any extra edge.”
Heh. That shut Golic up right quick.
This question gets even more interesting when considering games that are increasingly easy to cheat at. A good example is the tabletop game Warhammer. The rules aren’t able to cover every possible scenario, which means a fair amount of the game is actually up to on-the-spot interpretation.
I wouldn’t take a 500 monopoly bill, even if there was no chance of getting caught, but I’d argue a pretty ridiculous point, every day for a week, in order to not get charged in the flank by a group of minotaurs if the situation is even mildly questionable.
I remember reading a study of Olympic athletes and somewhere around 90% said they would cheat if they knew they would not get caught.
Kinda disappointed me.
Guarantee, no. Very very likely? It seems so, judgeing by personal experience and knowledge gleaned from reading and hearing reportd in the media. Including interviews of professional athletes. And business people.
By “true competitors” I mean those who need to win at any cost, in anything they do.
Bolding mine. This drives me batshit crazy. It’s hard for me to watch NBA games because of this. It’s like they want it to be a dunking/fast break exhibition instead of a real basketball game.
Oh, yeah, maybe I have a bad eye or something, but in MLB it looks to me like half the time they throw someone out at first, the first baseman doesn’t actually have his foot on the bag.
By definition, those who need to win at any cost will cheat. But that is certainly not my definition of “true competitors”. Also, I think you have a highly exaggerated impression about how many professional athletes would act like that. There are several great stories of golfers who self-reported small rules transgressions that cost them a tournament when no one else saw or noticed it. They would have won, but they were so honest they turned themselves in rather then win via a technical mistake.
In some professional sports, where steroids may be involved, the motivation to use unsanctioned means to gain an advantage is more than just a desire to “win”.
There is also paycheck considerations.
A baseball player may feel the temptation to take steroids because he feels he needs to, in order to be able to compete against guys that may actually be slightly more talented than himself, and if he wants to continue to have a career (and to continue to be able to pay the mortgage) more than a couple years long.
The competition for major league sports job-slots is fierce, and the players don’t get to be mediocre or “coast” for long, unlike, say, flipping burgers.
Does using something to give you an unfair advantage count as cheating?
What if you do something that isn’t described within the strict confines of the rules AND is an unknown tactic to the rest of the participants or the governing body, and it gives you a DISTINCT advantage?
Would I do it…
YUP!
In this context, I sure as HELL would do it.
If you ain’t cheatin’… You ain’t tryin’.
Sorry to post back to back… but in context to the OP:
Where I first heard the words I mentioned in my post above was from a very old and famous individual that my family had the pleasure of knowing on the personal level. At the end of a conversation he grabbed me by my arm, and said,"…take care of your family and yourself. And if you ain’t cheatin’ to do it… You ain’t tryin’."
I’m sure he wasn’t the first person to say it but he was the first to say it to me.
For a frame of reference, he wasn’t a sports figure though.
This was how the curve ball was described when first invented. Some people thought it was innovation, some thought it was cheating.
IMO, a person who will cheat to win, or wants to win at any cost is one who values other’s opinions more than his own. It seems to me that the cheaters need for others to think that they are better at doing something. I like the feeling I get when I know that I am better at doing something.
The reason I make this distinction is because of the use of the term “true competiter.” For me, the true competiter enjoys the feeling of knowing he is better than the others at his chosen sport. The one who cheats doesn’t enjoy the competition - is not a true competiter - he enjoys the adulation of others.
“True” as an adjective defining the essence of something, “competitor” as in a rival, being that which is so defined. Akin to “True Believer”, I think.
“Competitor” is not a definition of a measure of quality in a person. “He/she ia a real competitor” does not mean that that person is a “good” person, imo. The word itself isn’t a moral judgement.
Maybe we should first agree on what it is to “cheat”?
If someone wants to fight me, and I don’t want to fight but he insists so I whack the sucker with a two by four, that is not cheating.
If I’m a pro boxer and I load my glove, then that surely is cheating.
Yes, and even the size of the paychecks is part of the competition. Some pros will openly demand a contract bigger than (specifically) another players.
I don’t think I have any problems with definitions of cheating. I guess I’m just not sure what the question is. There are many examples of people who I would define as “True Competitors” that have gone out of their way not to cheat or to take unfair advantage of an opponent. The golfers I mentioned turned themselves in because it was the right thing to do. I would consider that “true” in defining the essence of competition.
How do we decide which definition of “true” is correct?